Healthcare perspectives from The Economist Intelligence Unit

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Bringing healthcare to hard-hit areas in Bangladesh

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An unusual approach in Germany

In 2004 a change in Germany’s health insurance law allowed the country’s statutory health insurers to participate in integrated care projects. Most programmes focused on managing care for specific conditions or procedures. But the Gesundes Kinzigtal Integrated Care programme set its sights on co-ordinating care for an entire population – the Kinzig valley.

Brazilian "frugal engineering"

Brazilian companies could benefit from a significant competitive advantage in the global market: their mastery of frugal engineering. Cutting costs and increasing access to good-quality healthcare are twin imperatives worldwide. In this environment, the dissemination of cheaper technology is a winning proposition. Despite a lack of resources, many companies have successfully developed equipment that uses simple technologies to achieve the same results as more sophisticated devices.

Making the most of little: India explores new models

India faces many of the same challenges as Brazil and provides an example of an innovative approach to healthcare. The country is leveraging its role as a contract researcher and manufacturer of generic drugs to increase the value of its output, for example by developing branded generic drugs and new formulations for existing drugs. Through “reverse pharmacology” it is developing and launching medications based on its traditional treatments at a fraction of the cost of drugs developed by Western companies—US$50m, compared with US$1bn respectively.

Delinking health from wealth: Business model innovation transforming Indian healthcare

When Devi Shetty was training as a heart surgeon in the 1980s, he was taught that healthcare is expensive. Some day, his tutors told him, everyone would grow rich enough to afford it.

But, as an Indian national living in a country with hundreds of millions of destitute and poor, Dr Shetty realised he couldn’t afford to wait. His countrymen needed health today, at prices they could afford, not in 50 years’ time when India had grown rich.

Sharing information—the payer’s perspective

In 2001 Humana, a health insurer headquartered in Kentucky with revenues of US$31bn in 2009, was looking into ways of automating its interactions with physicians’ offices. But it faced a quandary.

Going mobile at Methodist

When Methodist Hospital, a 460-bed facility serving the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles, wanted to create a computerised provider order entry system and digitise patient records, the IT department faced a number of challenges in coming up with a solution that would appeal to the doctors and nurses that had to use the new technology.

Virtua goes paperless

In late 2005 when Virtua, a diversified health-services company that operates four hospitals in the US state of New Jersey, decided to open a new hospital, the board decreed that it would be a paperless facility. By the time the IT department completed an assessment of what would be needed to make one facility paperless, the board decided that if the organisation was going to invest the money and human resources to do it in one facility, it may as well roll out the same technology in all its locations.

Does it work? Does that matter?

Perhaps the most visible element of mHealth is the profusion of phone apps, especially ones related to fitness and wellness. Tens of thousands are already available, and different market research firms have issued predictions for global downloads in 2012 that vary widely from just over 40 million to nearly 250 million.

A tale of two countries--India and the UK

The UK and India reflect the stark differences between developed and emerging markets in mHealth. For the latter, mHealth can address pressing healthcare needs; for the UK, it is simply an added luxury.

Early adopters: driven or desperate

With most disruptive technologies, the early adopters tend to be those who are ill-served by existing provision or not served at all. mHealth is no exception. The two types of patients in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s survey most attracted by its products and services are those with poorly managed chronic diseases and those who pay more than 30% of their household income towards healthcare. Both groups are better informed about mHealth, are much more likely to be using such applications and services already, and are noticeably more willing to pay for them (see chart 7).

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